Cycling Adventures with Brian Toone

Birmingham to Chattanooga – well, almost!

Posted

in

,

I had my longest training ride of the year today. Kristine was meeting some friends in Chattanooga for a lunch get-together, and my parents had volunteered to take the kids for the night – sooo what’s a crazy cyclist to do … bike to Chattanooga!!! That was the plan, and it went pretty well but I ran out of time and daylight and only made it to Rising Fawn, Georgia about 20 miles short of the goal! I had a tailwind for much of the ride and averaged close to 22 mph for the first 4 hours. Here’s a map of the route, some pictures I took along the way, and my HR/Power data.

Birmingham to Rising Fawn, Georgia - Route and Elevation Analysis
Birmingham to Rising Fawn, Georgia – Route and Elevation Analysis
Birmingham (Chelsea) to Rising Fawn, Georgia
Birmingham (Chelsea) to Rising Fawn, Georgia
Birmingham to Rising Fawn, Georgia - Elevation Profile
Birmingham to Rising Fawn, Georgia – Elevation Profile
Birmingham to Rising Fawn, Georgia HR and Power Data
Birmingham to Rising Fawn, Georgia HR and Power Data

To put everything in perspective, I had a tailwind for a good part of the ride and I still didn’t even make it the distance that they race in Paris-Roubaix! And I didn’t have cobblestones to deal with, although there was one part of US 11 in Dekalb County that was pretty rough.

Comments

7 responses to “Birmingham to Chattanooga – well, almost!”

  1. Kristine Avatar
    Kristine

    Lovely map and analysis. Where did you do those? 🙂

    Reply
  2. kartoone Avatar
    kartoone

    Haha, very funny – hmmm, let me see, maybe on the website I’ve been pouring all my spare time trying to get up and running: http://www.topocreator.com/

    Reply
  3. jacob Avatar
    jacob

    wow, that’s impressive brian. if you hadn’t made the detour up to mentone you’d have made it. incredible.

    for reference, i rode 35 miles with about 2,000′ of climbing on sunday, and still felt like it was all i could do after saturday!

    Reply
  4. kartoone Avatar
    kartoone

    Thanks Jacob – I had debated about whether or not to climb up to Mentone knowing that it might keep me from making it the whole way – but I really wanted to do the climb out of Fort Payne (the one that we went down on one of our training rides during last year’s camp) — essentially reversing that route back to Dan’s house. I came down the mountain just past Dan’s house on the climb that we had used for hill intervals. That whole stretch (the climb, the rolling hills and the descent down from Dan’s house) was my favorite part of the ride so I’m glad I did it!

    Reply
  5. Adam Smith Avatar
    Adam Smith

    That is crazy Toone!!! Freakin awesome, but crazy. Man, I just need to get on my bike and go like that. You da man!

    Reply
  6. Clinton Avatar
    Clinton

    Highway 11 goes from New Orleans to Maine, and I highly recommend most of it for riding. I have done Chatta to Knoxville on it, and plan to do the same as Brian to Chatta (but will skip Mentone). Most towns like Fort Payne have parallel roads so you avoid the pickup mirrors, which are the most dangerous feature of Hwy 11. Lot a chip seal and breakage on the edges, but not really a lot of traffic Thanks for the great map!

    Reply
  7. Clinton Avatar
    Clinton

    Forgot to add: take plenty of food and drink, the commerce on this highway was killed by the newer interstates in a lot of areas.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *